A Taste for Flesh

Zombieland, USA

The movie was a tremendous disappointment.

One might expect moviemakers to treat the subject of Zombies with respect and constant action.

Some of the great recent Zombie flicks would include "Dawn of the Dead" and "Legend" with Will Smith. Legend had a nice twist with supercharged Zombies rather than shambling corpses.

Zombieland was filled with many long, boring periods of nothing happening and the Zombies were not treated with respect. They were too easy to kill and the overlay of attempted humor was heavy-handed.

Bill Murray made a cameo appearance. but failed to add much to the movie. Woody Harrelson overplayed his role, which seemed to have echos of his "Natural Born Killers" masterpiece.

I have high hopes that the movie in making, "World War Z", will treat the Zombie population with the respect and fear to which they are entitled. Abberations like "Shawn of the Dead" and "Zombieland" are a disgrace to the genre.

The finale in an amusement park was extremely stupid. Why would any rational person turn on the lights in an amusement park and attract every Zombie within a two mile radius?

Anyway, I'm still sorting though the 2009 pixs for the magical 13 to make up the Firecloud Calendar. My SIL is now on the mailing list.

I think the reason I like Zombie movies so much is that they offer simple solutions in contrast to the complex problems we don't know how to deal with. What do we do with AIDs, poverty, Zombie banks, the recession, unemployment, global warming, peak oil or nuclear waste storage? No Idea. Zombies present simple problems...just shoot them in the head.

Zombies have a much shorter literary tradition than vampires or werewolves. Nevertheless, "American Werewolf in London" had some great music and visual effects.

My favorite horror movie of all time was "Jacob's Ladder" a truly frightening movie in which you never realized until the end that the images and experiences you were seeing were in the dying mind of a wounded Vietnam soldier given an experimental battlefield drug by the government.

In the event of an actual Zombie outbreak, my M1 Carbine and a machete would be useful and preferred tools. The local press will attempt to cover up a Zombie outbreak initially. The latest documented Zombie outbreak occured in 2003 in St. Thomas, but it was only a class-2 outbreak, easily controlled and extinguished by Homeland Security.


There are many simple things you can do to prepare for a Zombie outbreak. For example, I have in my Zombie kit a SCUBA wetsuit I can wear which is nearly bite proof as well as leather motorcycle gloves and a crash helmet with a visor. The important thing is to present as small a bite opportunity as possible.

Walk in Beauty, Cry for Shame

Ancient Bristle cones and the Manzanar National Historical Site

It rained all night and looked bad up on the Western Sierras. We called and postponed the horseback ride. The Eastern Sierras have the oldest and biggest Bristle cones in the world. Mrs. Phred is examining a tree that died in 1676 AD. It was 3600 years old.


Bristle cone pines are the oldest known plant or animal. This grove has the oldest and largest collection of these ancient trees. It's a 45 mile drive up back canyon roads to get here at 10,100 feet.


We hike up a trail to see the strange and twisted trees. They take 100 years to grow an inch in diameter. The root system is very shallow to take advantage of the meager moisture. Some trees die as their roots become exposed. Estimates are that the soil they grow in erodes at a rate of one foot each thousand years.



When you think about living 5.000 years, at first it seems like a good idea. But then you have to think that Bristle cones don't get to travel much or see anything very interesting. I'll settle for my four score and seven and mobility.


Bristle cones have lots of labor-saving and survival strategies. The needles last an average of 40 years. When water is scarce, part of the tree sacrifices itself and dies. I took a picture of one tree here whose ring core sample dates it back to 2624 B.C. I think this is the one.


We had some time in the afternoon so we drove to the Manzanar National Historical Monument. During WW11 over 120,000 innocent Japanese-Americans were interned in facilities that FDR described as concentration camps. The internees were give 48 hours to abandon their homes and businesses and report for transportation to a camp with only the possessions they could carry. Only six of the 150 that died in this camp remain in the cemetery. The rest were removed by the families who began new lives after the war with $25 and a bus ticket. People leave coins, toys, Sake and other mementos at this sad memorial.


As we walked in, a Japanese-American and his teenage boys were looking at a picture of people in the camp. The boys asked the Dad if he knew anyone in the pictures. We went to the half-hour movie with that family. I couldn't meet his eyes as we walked out. This perhaps the most shameful, racist violation of constitutional rights of Americans in the 20th Century. Thankfully, the theater was dark and my tears were not all that noticeable.


Over 26,000 Japanese-Americans served in combat in WWII. The 442nd segregated Combat Regiment had the highest casualty rate and most medals of valor of any American unit in Europe. At the same time, the government asked the interned Japanese-American boys to sign a loyalty oath and agree to be drafted which infuriated a number of the young men who were behind barbed wire in the California desert. 85 of the "disloyals" were shipped off to Tule Lake where the ACLU complained about beatings and harsh conditions. This is a diorama representing the barracks that were constructed to house and contain 10,000 detainees at Manzanar.


The 120,000 Japanese-American citizens who were sent to concentration camps for "their own protection" were surprised to see the barbed wire, guard towers and the bayonets turned in toward the camps, rather than out. No Japanese-American was ever charged with sedition or espionage during WW11.

Bryce Canyon National Park

Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah

Bryce is known for Hoodoos, Antelope herds, Bristlecone pines and excellent stargazing. Ebenezer Bryce was a Mormon who settled in the mouth of the canyon in the 1870s. When asked about the canyon he reportedly said, 'It's a hell of a place to lose a cow.'

Like many of the great parks, the Union Pacific railroad built a huge rustic lodge here to stimulate rail travel before the property became a park in the early 20th century. During the Great Depression, the Civilian Conservation Corp jobs program developed many of the trails and other facilities that still exist in America's parks.




Bristlecone pines live on the rim of the 10,000 foot summit and are known to reach ages of 1600 years. Hoodoos are orange spires formed here in the desert by erosion from rain. The Paiute Indians said that they were 'legend people' who had been turned to stone by the trickster Coyote.

 

We drive the motorbike 20 miles up to the Sunset Point summit and walked the Bristlecone trail. The average visibility is 113 miles. The park boasts the best star-gazing conditions in the US. They claim you can see your shadow by the light from Venus. Unfortunately it was overcast in the evening.